The Impact of Age on the Job Satisfaction of University Teachers

Abstract

The impact of age on the job satisfaction of university teachers

A general trend in today's organisations is that they are staffed with older workers. One interesting question, therefore, is whether older workers are more satisfied with their jobs when compared with younger employees? The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of age on the job satisfaction of UK academics. A questionnaire including several demographic questions such as age, gender and rank was administered to 1, 102 university teachers. A total of 554 responses were received, giving a response rate of 50.3 per cent. Using frequency analysis, the overall job satisfaction score of the academics was found to be positively related to their age. A three-way analysis of variance confirmed the hypothesis that age is linearly related to the overall measure of their job satisfaction. Further analyses showed that the age of the academics is significantly related to their satisfaction with teaching, research, and administration and management, i.e. the core aspects of their job. The nature of the relationship is explored. It was observed that the construct developed for ascertaining an overall measure of job satisfaction was more rigorous than the popular Job Descriptive Index.

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